


The Breaking Point

by took_skye



Series: Living For the Night [27]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Domestic Violence, F/M, POV Female Character, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-07
Updated: 2011-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/took_skye/pseuds/took_skye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her teenage daughter is put on a psych hold in a mental facility JJ starts to do some digging and finds her breaking point with her husband, Officer George Foyet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breaking Point

  
_"I want you to do something. I want you to get yourself out of the bed, and get over to the window and scream as loud as you can. Otherwise you only have another three minutes to live." ~ Henry Stevenson to wife, Sorry, Wrong Number_

***///***

I tear through her room without even knowing what I’m looking for. Drugs? No, drugs were never the issue and neither was alcohol, though I’m sure she drinks some. Even the supposed good girls drink a little at sixteen. Something else, something I won’t be able to put my finger on until I find it. And I do find it.

Behind the bookcase, wedged against the wall to keep it from the floor, is a shoebox covered in scribbles and doodles. It’s just like any teen girl’s secret box decorated in stickers and multi-colored inks. But my daughter’s box is heavy, there is more than just trinkets and a diary in this box. This box is weighted down by secrets that are bigger, heavier, darker than the ordinary teen girl’s.

 _PRIVATE!! DO NOT OPEN!!!_

A mother heeds no such warnings when her child is at stake. I sit on the purple and white striped comforter, box in my lap, and lift the lid.

For a brief moment I swear my heart stops with my breathing. Then both pick-up, double-time, as my eyes start to sting with tears I didn’t know I had to shed. I throw the cover back on the box and carry it out of the room with me.

***

“Hey Sunshine!” George cheers as he comes through the door.

I hold my breath to hold my tongue. This time he will come to me.

“JJ? Babe?” He calls out curiously, unaccustomed to the lack of happy housewife coming to greet him.

I stay at the table and wait. I only give my husband a beacon to follow. “In here.”

George appears in the wide arch that splits the living and dinning room. “What gives?”

Our daughter is locked up, committed, and he acts as if it isn’t a problem. Just a misunderstanding, a vendetta against him taken out on his baby girl, something that he can get all cleared up. Perhaps he is right, but it's irrelevant. There is something very wrong with our daughter and he won't be able to deny it any longer. Not with the evidence from the shoebox spread out over our dinning room table before him...Ten knives, two diaries, a scrapbook, and numerous odds and ends that should make a parent raise eyebrows and questions.

My eyes rise slow from the red scrawl of one of the diaries. “I think Lil should stay.”

“Stay? Stay where?” then it clicks. “In the nuthouse?” and the shock and indignation sets in. “Why the fuck do you say that?”

As the years passed George’s easy charm and lightheartedness have become less easy for him. He dotes on Lil, lets her get away with more than any parent should, but he’s harsh with Henry and his kindness to the boy seems forced more often than not. We don’t fight so much, that’d be too easy, too honest. Instead we share a bed we barely fuck in, glances that are anything but loving, and slowly drift into our own worlds.

“She’s sick, George.”

He heads deeper into the room keeping eyes lazered into mine. “You’re some kind of an expert now, are you, Jennifer?”

I don’t back down. “Do you even see what’s here on this table?”

“What?”

“A scrapbook filled with articles on missing and murdered people and diaries giving graphic, detailed, depictions of strangling cats and slicing up boys, I mean…” how can he not see what I see? “Even if this is all just fantasy or something these thoughts are still in her head, George.” I grab one of the knives and lift it up. “This is not normal, George!” I let my frustration show in my tone just a moment before pulling myself back together. “Teen girls collect jewelry and makeup, not knives. She should be writing about boys, not blood. The things she…she writes…”

“Are probably just bullshit," he shrugs it all off. "I mean, come on JJ, you found it so it’s probably a plant.”

“She slit her wrists, George.”

“Her arms were cut up, that’s all. For all we know someone did it to her at the club they found her at.”

The man I married smiles soft and placating like I’m the crazy one, the hysterical mother blowing it all out of proportion. “Look, sweetheart, if you really think she needs it then I’ll make sure Lil talks to someone, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.” It’s something, at least.

“Good, I’ll have it all set-up for when she gets home.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” The annoyance with me seeps into his tone.

“I don’t want her in this house again until she’s gotten help, George,” I stand firm as I start to stand up. “Real help. Whether it’s at the hospital or some halfway house I…I want a professional to tell me she’s not a danger before she comes back. Because if this is a plant I shudder to think what she’s really hiding.”

George dismisses me with a laugh.

I hold a glare as I start going around the table. “You know what, George, you can find this funny or pretend it’s a strange phase or just…play this however you want to play this, but I’m not signing her back into our custody.”

“Well no one needs you to, now do they?” He replies as calmly as ever.

It’s not so much his smugness that bothers me, it’s that he’s right. Only one guardian has to sign the release forms for Lil and I know that no one will even hesitate if it’s the hero cop vouching for the sick daughter.

“Fine,” I shrug as if giving up just a moment before I cross my arms, “but if you do that I will fight you.”

“And lose.”

Making my way around the table I head towards my husband of almost 15 years. “You really don’t think anything is wrong with her, do you? I mean you know she doesn’t think like a normal girl, but you don’t see anything wrong with it.” I’m not sure if all of me believes what I’m saying, but the parts with experience covering crimes for the paper sure as hell do.

“I just don’t see why a mother would want to keep her child locked up in the loony bin because she didn’t like what she saw after snooping in the kid’s room.”

I stop a foot from him. “If you refuse to do anything to protect our family, I will, and I’ll do it without you.”

“No you won’t.” The chuckle’s arrogant and amused. My gut tells me that the risks to my children are starting to outweigh the benefits to my career in this relationship.

“Watch me,” the tension of my jaw shows in my voice. I've had enough of this. Of George calling the shots, taking charge, doing the bare minimum to please me and thinking that, in the end, my opinion doesn't even count. “Now get the fuck out of my house, I want a divorce!”

In an instant, less than a blink of an eye, everything human about George seems to leave him. His hold is bruising and the slam to the wall shocks the air out of my lungs. “I’m not going anywhere,” the growl from him is deeper and darker than I’ve ever heard before. His eyes are almost black.

“Get off me,” I spit back the moment my lungs refill just grateful my son is at soccer practice rather than witnessing this fast spiraling of his parents' happy marriage.

“You don’t tell me what to do, JJ.” His voice is already calmer, but no less threatening. “Now I’ve played very nice with you for years but, honestly, you’re starting to wear out your uses. You and the brat.”

I don’t even have to wonder who he means. Henry. “Then let me and the kids go.”

George smirks some, “What kind of man would just let his family walk away?” A hand goes to my throat, squeezes like he's wringing me out for signs of fear. “When I say ‘til death do us part’, I mean it, Jennifer.”

As suddenly as he was on me George pulls back leaving me to stunned to do anything but stand against the wall, wide-eyed, the tears streaming down my face.

“Now…” George takes a deep breath in as if relax, though he seems disturbingly so already. “I think maybe you need a bit of time to think things through, wouldn’t you agree?”

I nod dumbly.

“That’s my girl,” his smile is soft and warm once again as he slowly approaches even as I slide across the wall some to get away. One hand flattens itself by my head to stop me while the other reaches out to touch my cheek, rubbing a tear away with his thumb. “Tell you what, I’m gonna go out, blow off a little steam, and you can stay here and think about things. When I get back hopefully you’ll see things my way, be willing to put our family before yourself.”

I don’t respond save to choke on a sobbing breath.

His lips are almost teasing against mine; it's the softest he's ever kissed me and the first time it's made my skin crawl. “Later, Sunshine," he breathes into my mouth. Another kiss to make my squirm and he gives me a wink before heading out the way he came. Cheerful and without a care.

My knees finally buckle and I slump down the wall to the floor. For more than a minute I listen to the clock and shake. Tick…tock… _dear god what am I going to do_ …tick…tock… _what will George do_ …tick…tock… _this needs to end now!_

I’m up, grabbing things for Henry and myself, stuffing them into luggage cases, before heading back downstairs and repacking Lil’s shoebox. With a shaky calm I pack up the family car, raid the money hide-aways I know of, and leave my wedding ring on the dinning room table before exiting the house my children and I have called home for more than a decade.

George will not dictate how this ends for me and my children.

He won't dictate anything about our lives.

Not anymore.

***///***

 _"Mother of God, is this the end...?" ~ Rico, Little Caesar_


End file.
